


Mirror, Mirror

by nightcamedown



Category: Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
Genre: F/M, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-20
Updated: 2009-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-04 17:43:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/32748
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nightcamedown/pseuds/nightcamedown
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Billy was seven the first time he saw Dr. Horrible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Mirror, Mirror

**Author's Note:**

  * For [euphrosyna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/euphrosyna/gifts).



Billy was seven the first time he saw Dr. Horrible.

  


  


The bathroom was small, cold, all dingy green tile and scummed glass, and the only room in the apartment with a door that locked. He knew better than to run water - they were living hand to mouth already, his mother said, and the boyfriends were never around when the bills came due - but if he pressed his ears over his hands and kicked the tub hard enough he could just pretend the harsh words in the other room were from the television.

  


  


Something landed hard outside the door and Billy looked up reflexively. For a heart-stopping moment, a stranger looked back at him from the spotted mirror. Someone older and unafraid - a doctor, cold and clinical, with eyes like glass. 

  


  


*

  


  


He started assembling the doctor after his mother died, of liver cancer, during his junior year of college. The parts were easy enough to come by for a chemistry major: lab coat and goggles, gloves and high rubber boots. When his roommate went home for the weekend (a small indulgence that Billy envied and despised in equal measure), he locked the door, dressed, and stood staring at himself in the mirror.

  


  


"Mwah ha ha," he intoned. His reflection remained resolutely harmless. He cleared his throat. "Dr. Horrible is here. Time to quake with fear!" The Billy in the mirror mimicked him obediently, and looked not at all horrible. 

  


  


*

  


  


Grad school didn't pan out. He claimed it was because his advisor was hampered by twentieth-century tools and nineteenth-century morality. He did not admit, then or later, that it had anything to do with his total inability to bring a project to fruition. 

  


  


He had drive - nobody questioned that. But there was a broken connection somewhere in the recesses of his brain, a frayed wire that waved and sparked fruitlessly, failing at the critical moment to pass along the signal that might allow him to achieve something meaningful. He left the lab with a bitter taste in his mouth and ten thousand dollars of electrical equipment in his backpack.

  


  


He had enough dirt on his advisor to assure the man wouldn't pursue the theft. As Billy climbed into his car, he winked at himself in the rear view mirror, and was pleased to see a distinctly horrible smirk reflected back. 

  


  


*

  


  


He was twenty-eight before he tried again to summon the doctor. The occasion was his termination from his latest low-paying job.

  


  


He was out of money and late on rent. Moist was willing to chip in a bit extra  - and it tickled Billy to no end to see their landlord reluctantly picking apart the wad of soggy bills that constituted Moist's half of the rent each month; the hilarity of seeing him lay out the entire amount to dry before he could deposit it would almost be worth the sting of asking Moist for the favor - but that was no way to develop a minion's loyalty. Not that Moist was a minion, quite yet - that would be putting the cart in front of the horse - but at some point Billy planned to make him Head Minion, and a history of no-interest loans wouldn't do much to inspire the proper amount of respectful awe.

  


  


So, as dusk fell, he pulled on the old coat, pleased to feel it stretch a bit too tight across his shoulders, lowered his goggles, and walked into his most recent place of employment. 

  


  


The old woman who ran the dog washing service took one look at him and gave him the entire cash register. Literally. Her hands were shaking too badly to open it, so she pushed the whole thing across the counter. "Just take it. I don't want any trouble."

  


  


He tucked the ray gun awkwardly under one arm and took the register with the other. "Thank y - I mean - Dr. Horrible has paid you a visit, now tell all your friends how frightening -" He faltered as the rhyme escaped him, but squared his shoulders and finished with a confidence he didn't feel. " -is it!" 

  


  


"Is it?" The old lady asked in a quavering voice. "Is what?"

  


  


"How frightening it is when I visit, I mean. Dr. Horrible has paid you a _visit_, now tell all your friends how frightening _is it_. Visit, is it." He rolled his eyes and shifted the weight of the cash register onto his hip. "It's a rhyme."

  


  


She looked skeptical. "Not a very good one."

  


  


"Doesn't have to be," he said sharply. "I'm the one with the gun."

  


  


"I don't want any trouble," she repeated. She crossed her arms tightly across her chest. Her name was Ellen, he remembered belatedly, and wished he hadn't. She'd been singing to herself when he'd walked in, a melancholy tune that she sang with a low, sad voice. "Please leave."

  


  


When he turned he flinched at the image caught in the clean glass door. He saw a loser with a hastily modified paintball gun and a tin ear. 

  


  


But Ellen had seen someone else. Maybe not Dr. Horrible - yet. But she'd seen enough to make her push the cash register across the counter at him before he had a chance to speak, and that was something.

  


  


That was something.

  


  


*

  


  


His first video blog entry received one comment, which accused him of incestuous bestiality among other things, but more importantly it addressed him as Dr. Horrible.

  


  


(Well, technically it addressed him as _docter fucking horribul_ \- but still. He walked around in a happy daze for hours.)

  


  


The webcam had been a stroke of inspiration. He could get his message out without the nerves and guilt which always seemed to come with actual evildoing. He could edit out the parts where he rambled, the odd moments when his voice broke, and best of all he could choose the takes where he mostly closely resembled the villain he intended to be.

  


  


*

  


  


He was thirty when he finally became a nemesis.

  


  


He had graduated from dog washing shops to banks. Admittedly, none of his bank heists had been unqualified successes, but he'd received a gratifying amount of negative press. His blog viewership was increasing exponentially. 

  


  


Anyway: becoming a nemesis. It was high on his To Do List of Villainy, and like so much of his career in evil it came about through serendipity more than planning. Captain Hammer apprehended him - if tripping headlong as he entered the bank and causing a chain reaction which resulted in a potted ficus falling directly across Billy's escape route could be called "apprehending" - then beat him cheerfully about the head and shoulders as paparazzi cameras flashed. 

  


  


When he paused to rest his punching arm Billy twisted away and raised his own arm defiantly - he knew he didn't have a chance against Captain Hammer in hand-to-hand combat, but he also knew that the press couldn't resist an underdog. He figured, rightly, that if someone snapped a pic at just the right moment it would make a perfectly serviceable Page 3 photo in some city paper, and a photo like that would require a caption.

  


  


He held up the newspaper triumphantly on his next video. It was awkward, with his arm still in a sling and his split lip still too tender for a fully evil smile, but the extra pain had been worth posing for that precious moment instead of fleeing. Under the photo, in tiny, grainy print, the caption said: "Captain Hammer and his nemesis Dr. Horrible duke it out after the foiled heist."

  


  


*

  


  


The next time he saw Captain Hammer, the bastard had the audacity to wink at him and say, loud enough for the groupies to hear, "Ah ha! My nemesis, Dr. Horrible!" 

  


  


Billy knew it was intended as a kindness, and was so infuriated he went after Captain Hammer instead of the other way around. Landed a few lucky punches, too, on that stupid, square-jawed face.

  


  


*

  


  


Then there was a girl.

  


  


When she smiled at him sidelong across a basket of clean laundry, he knew she wasn't seeing Dr. Horrible - but he didn't think she would smile like that at the pathetic failure that he had always known Billy to be. Maybe he could be someone else entirely.

  


  


That lasted...not very long.

  


  


He honestly tried to be a better Billy. For several weeks he applied for normal jobs, and gave up the blog, and didn't mind a bit when Captain Hammer went on the evening news to claim credit for Dr. Horrible's departure from their fair city. 

  


  


He practiced introducing himself in the mirror. Once he was confident he could state his own name without stuttering, he tried to figure out how to explain he was working at Starbucks while also impressing her with his intelligence, drive, and charisma. 

  


  


It was no use. No matter how he imagined the conversation, she always ended up laughing at him. Not openly, of course - she was much too nice for that - but she would cock her head, and her nose would crinkle a bit. She might make a light joke about his chemistry degree, and ask if he was putting a little something extra in the drinks to make them so addictive...But he knew what she would really mean. _Loser. Pathetic, underachieving failure_.

  


  


He quit the next day, and spent the weekend working up a pair of more intimidating goggles.

  


  


*

  


  


Before seeing Her, Billy hadn't given much thought to Dr. Horrible's love life. Now he perched on the counter near the dryers, watching her hold the door for a young mother burdened with what seemed like enough laundry to clothe an army, and realized that the doctor would have an epic love. 

  


  


Yes. He would have the love of a good woman, and that love would keep him honest. He would never forget the little people when he ruled the world with a rubber-gloved iron fist.

  


  


*

  


  


His latest application to the League had been sitting on top of his dresser for weeks. Miraculously, it had escaped damage from Moist's occasional, disastrous attempts to tidy up the place. He tucked in a copy of the letter from the Deputy Mayor (he considered highlighting the key words but didn't want to seem condescending), sealed the envelope, and dropped it in the mailbox on his way to the Laundry Mart.

  


  


He felt good about this one. Bad Horse would see his potential and, in time, so would she. With her help he could finally become the monster in the mirror. He grinned and found himself humming a new song as he drove; it felt like a brand new day.


End file.
